m and the hanging
ropes of the banyan trees, down the narrow native path, and on through
strangely empty streets and deserted bazaar to the Praying Ghats.

The air beat about them with the incessant throbbing of many drums,
calling to prayer--calling to sacrifice.

Calling! calling! calling!

CHAPTER XXXVII

"Let us pass our lives at Benares, living by the banks
of the divine river, clad only in a single garment, and
with our hands uplifted over our heads."--_The Vairagya Sataka_.

The Praying Ghats or Steps lay desolate in the light of the full moon.

Hundreds of small lights twinkled and flickered before the countless
temples; hundreds of fading flower garlands, hung about the temple
doors or festooned about the gods--some of which are quite
indescribable--perfumed the night air; and to the right and to the left
the smouldering bodies on the Burning Ghats cast a crimson glow on the
slow, silvery waters of India's most holy river.

Of worshippers there was not one.

Of the countless priests who crowd the steps at dawn there was but one.

The mad priest.

Naked save for a loin cloth, he stood as he always stands from dawn to
dawn with feet wide apart and hands upraised to the heavens, outlined
against some one of the Rajah's palaces which crown the top and stretch
the length of the terraces like a mighty rampart between the holiness
of the place, and the fret and traffic of the outer world.

The holy man's arms, his legs, his emaciated body are covered with a
fine ash powder, his long hair is matted with cinders and cow-dung, his
mad eyes stare across the river into the infinite, at that which _we_
cannot see, as he stands shouting unintelligible, maybe mad words,
maybe not, to the glory of his goddess, Kali the Terrible.

Was he born mad? no one knows! What does he eat or drink? A handful
of rice, a sip of water from his glittering bronze vessel! When does
he sleep? No one can tell you.

Who knows! who cares!

He is a holy man! the mad priest of the Holy City!

He alone had taken no heed of the incessant resistless throbbing of the
drums behind him in the city; neither did he take notice of the two
white figures as they ran lightly, swiftly, hand-in-hand down the
sunken, crooked, granite steps to a place between the praying rafts at
the water's edge.

For a moment Leonie hesitated with the water lapping her feet on the
third step, then she turned her head slowly, and looked straigh